


and the moment passes

by clasch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Episode: s09e06 Heaven Can't Wait, M/M, Newly Human Castiel (Supernatural), there's only one bed but it's sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:33:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26726746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clasch/pseuds/clasch
Summary: “Where to, Cas?” Dean asks, as if that’s a simple question, as if Castiel is supposed to have the answer ready to go. But it isn’t a simple question. And Castiel certainly doesn’t have an answer ready to go.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46





	and the moment passes

**Author's Note:**

> i'd like to personally apologize to castiel ♥

“Where to, Cas?” Dean asks, as if that’s a simple question, as if Castiel is supposed to have the answer ready to go.

But it isn’t a simple question. And Castiel certainly doesn’t have an answer ready to go. Where to? He could ask Dean to drive him back to the Gas-n-Sip so he can curl up in his thin sleeping bag in the supply closet. But the thought of spending the night on that hard floor surrounded by the sharp chemical smells of cleaning supplies and nacho cheese is suddenly revolting. He can only look at Dean and be mindful of his wrist as he climbs into the front seat of the Impala. After a long moment, Dean climbs in after him and the still-familiar creak of the driver’s side door opening and closing is somehow comforting. Dean smells of dirt and wood smoke from burning Ephraim’s vessel, Castiel notices vaguely, cradling his wrist in his good hand.

Dean clears his throat. “Let me get you patched up at least, okay? Then I can drop you…wherever.”

Wherever. Castiel nods once, gaze trained on his hands. The cloth he has wrapped around his cut palm is tacky with blood, although the cut itself seems to have stopped bleeding. There’s a dull ache in his palm and a sharp one in his wrist. He doesn’t know what a broken bone feels like. He remembers that Jimmy broke his arm once as a teenager, but then doesn’t know what to do with that. The memory was dulled by time and Grace even when Jimmy still inhabited this body. Castiel’s body now. Castiel’s wrist, which might be broken, except he doesn’t know what that feels like.

“Cas?” Dean says, sounding…worried?

It’s then that Castiel realizes he’s crying. He wipes at his face with his good hand, but still can’t find it in himself to say anything. An uneasy silence stretches between them, broken only by the quiet hitching sounds of Castiel’s breath.

“Okay.” Dean starts the Impala, which roars to life and startles Castiel, who flinches, jostles his wrist, and flinches again. “Let’s just – look, I got a motel room. I’ll clean up your hand.”

“My wrist,” Castiel says, voice thick from crying, and it takes a monumental amount of effort for him to lift his head and look at Dean. “It’s – It might be broken.”

Dean looks back at him for a moment and Castiel doesn’t recognize the expression there. “Okay,” Dean repeats. “Right, yeah, I’ll look at your wrist too, okay?” He doesn’t wait for Castiel to say anything, which is probably for the best, and pulls away from the curb in front of Nora’s house. 

The corners of Dean’s mouth are turned down and there’s a hard set to his jaw. Fresh tears prick at Castiel’s eyes. Dean must be angry with him, Castiel decides. For being so fragile and useless that he can’t even tell whether his own wrist is broken. He looks away, stares down at the bloodstain on the cloth wrapped around his hand, memorizing its shape. He squints into the headlights of an approaching car. He watches as he rolls the hem of his shirt between two fingers, worrying at a loose thread until it falls away, then pulls his hand away when he remembers there are only two other shirts tucked neatly in his sleeping bag in the supply closet. He doesn’t look at Dean again. And Dean just drives them in silence.

***

Castiel watches the lazy drip of the showerhead from where he sits on the closed lid of the toilet, breathing carefully through his nose. Dean is perched on the edge of the tub, bent over Castiel’s hand with a pair of tweezers.

“Almost got it,” Dean says, then lets out a breath. “There. Big fucker.” He holds the tweezers up so Castiel can see the long hooked thorn he pulled from Castiel’s palm. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Dean sets the tweezers down and reaches across Castiel for a clean washcloth. The bathroom of Dean’s motel room is cramped, especially with Dean crowding into Castiel’s space. Their knees knock together in a way that Castiel vaguely recognizes as something he would have enjoyed some other time in some other place.

There is a streak of dirt on the back of Dean’s neck just below his hairline, like he wiped at it with the back of his hand. Probably when he was burning Ephraim. Ephraim’s vessel. The body of a man who believed in angels.

“Do you know what his name was?” Castiel asks, startling himself with the question.

“Who?” Dean maneuvers Castiel’s arm to rest on the lip of the sink so he can run cool water over the gash on Castiel’s palm. “Let that sit. I’ll get a brace for your wrist.” He stands and rolls his neck, letting out a pleased sound when there’s a pop.

Castiel hears Dean’s retreating footsteps, the door of their room open, the familiar creak of the trunk of the Impala in the parking lot, but only vaguely. The water that swirls down the discolored drain is tinged pink with Castiel’s blood and then runs clear. The man’s name could have been Noah or Christopher or Michael. The man’s name could have been Jimmy.

“Here,” Dean says, turning off the faucet. He dries Castiel’s hand, careful not to jostle his wrist, and rubs antibiotic ointment around the ragged edges of the cut.

When he started at the Gas-n-Sip, Nora showed Castiel, well, showed  _ Steve, _ the first aid kit on the shelf in the supply closet. And the first night he spent there, he lay awake, staring at the glossy white cross on the front that was  _ just _ visible in the darkness, unable to sleep until he got up and turned the plastic container to face the other way.

“Okay, Cas,” Dean says, taping down the end of the gauze wrapped around Castiel’s palm three times, over his thumb, under his thumb, over it once more. His hands are gentle on Castiel’s wrist. “I don’t think it’s broken,” he says finally. “Ice it for the next few nights, couple of ibuprofen, keep the brace on during work, and you should be good to go in no time.”

Castiel nods once and fixes his gaze on the showerhead while Dean maneuvers his hand into the brace. A drip forms as if in slow motion, stretching, oblong and misshapen, until it detaches and falls, splatting against the drain. Castiel swallows, feeling slightly ill, and looks away. Still, it’s been a long time since his last real shower.

There isn’t a shelter in Rexford, or a YMCA, so Castiel bought a portable shower at the combination hardware and sporting goods store after his first week at the Gas-n-Sip. Every few nights, he locks up promptly at eleven, fills the bag with tepid water from the bathroom sink, and goes into the small patch of woods behind the store to quickly scrub himself down with a rapidly shrinking bar of soap and hose himself off. And he carefully washes his face, underarms, genitals, hands, and feet with paper towels and hand soap early each morning before slipping out of the store to be seen unlocking the front door from the outside.

The showers in the shelters in the cities before Rexford seem ages ago. His shower at the bunker, a millennium. Longer. Castiel had spent centuries, millennia in Heaven without a second thought, watching civilizations wax and wane and fall into oblivion, and now each month that passed was an age.

“Dean,” Castiel says, surprising himself. “May I shower?”

Dean is fiddling with the straps on the brace. “Uh,” he says and looks down at Castiel’s wrist. “Sure, but I’ll have to undo all this.”

“I can do it myself,” Castiel says, already reaching over with his good hand. The bathroom suddenly feels too crowded, even with the door open. Dean is too close to him, and Castiel can feel words bubbling up in his throat: that he can’t remember his last shower because he doesn’t have a shower, doesn’t have a bed, doesn’t have a home, doesn’t have anything except a jacket, two shirts, one pair of pants, two pairs of socks and underwear, a cellphone charger, a toothbrush, toothpaste, disposable razor, deodorant, and a portable shower bag with a nozzle rolled into his sleeping bag in the back corner of the supply closet. He has the cellphone Dean slipped into the pocket of the jacket he gave Castiel at the door of the bunker, but the 80 odd dollars from Dean are gone, mostly spent on the Enochian script now inked onto his side. He has the clothes on his back and the Gas-n-Sip vest Dean tossed carelessly into the backseat of the Impala and a name that isn’t his, but he doesn’t have his Grace or his wings or his brothers and sisters or Heaven. He has his pain and his failures and his guilt, but he doesn’t have the Winchesters. He has Dean with him now in this cramped motel bathroom, but he won’t have Dean in the morning, or the next day, or the day after that.

Castiel unwraps the brace, unwinds the gauze, sheds his clothes after Dean closes the door behind him. He turns on the hot water and tries not to think of falling.

***

The water pressure in the motel shower isn’t nearly as good as at the bunker, but Castiel stays there for a long time, revelling in the constant spray, the tiny bottle of shampoo. He washes his hair twice, digging into his scalp with his fingers. His palm stings from the shampoo, but he doesn’t care. He scrubs his skin with a rough washcloth, then again with his hands, until he is flushed pink. For the first time in months, Castiel feels clean.

Castiel turns the water off with a squeak and is surprised to hear silence coming from the motel room. He had expected the low rumble of the television, or perhaps the muffled sound of Dean’s half of a phone call to Sam. But he can’t hear anything at all. Maybe Dean left him here in this motel all alone, he thinks suddenly. He doesn’t know how far away the Gas-n-Sip is from here. He doesn’t know how he would get back. Is there a bus? Perhaps another guest at the motel would give him a ride if he paid them, although he wouldn’t be able to pay them until he got to work and retrieved his small stack of bills from inside one of his clean pairs of socks.

Drying himself quickly and pulling his clothes on over his still damp hair, Castiel wrenches the door open in a panic.

Dean is still there, sitting on the edge of the bed with a grim expression, staring at his hands folded in his lap. He looks up as the bathroom door bangs against the wall. “You okay, Cas?”

“I thought -” he pauses, swallowing his fear, and the anger and sadness underneath.  _ I thought you left me here alone. I thought you drove away and left me behind to fend for myself. Again.  _ “Yes.”

They look at each other for a long moment, longer than Castiel has managed all evening since Dean dropped him off in front of Nora’s house, until Dean coughs and looks away. “Uh. Good,” Dean says to his hands. “Need any help with your wrist? I got some ice.”

“No.” Castiel turns back into the bathroom to hang his towel neatly on the rack and retrieve the brace from the edge of the sink. “Thank you,” he adds when he catches sight of himself in the mirror.

“Then, uh, do you mind?” Dean asks from the bathroom door. He gestures vaguely to the shower.

“Of course not, Dean. It’s your room.”

“Right,” Dean says, still not looking at Castiel. He doesn’t move from the doorway, so Castiel has to squeeze by him, angling to avoid brushing against Dean to avoid making things even more awkward, if that’s possible.

Castiel sits at the tiny table where Dean set the first aid supplies and the bucket of ice to dab more antibiotic ointment on his cut and wind the gauze around his palm, a little clumsily. He discovered early on that, as a human, he was left-handed. Handedness was another inconvenience that took some getting used to. Now he would have to adjust again. And how would he explain his wrist to Nora? He had hidden his cut palm wrapped in a cloth from the trunk of the Impala behind his back when she walked him to the door. But there was no hiding the brace, especially since he would have to use his weaker hand for - how long did Dean say?

“I fell,” Castiel says aloud to the quiet room, swallows. “In the shower. I slipped in the shower and sprained my wrist. I can still work.” He tightens the last of the straps on the brace. “I slipped and sprained my wrist. I have to wear a brace, but I can still work.”

The shower is still running, so Castiel looks around the room for the first time. When they arrived, Dean had shepherded him into the bathroom right away, so he hadn’t gotten a good look.

Oh.

Besides the tiny table and chair, there is an equally tiny kitchenette with a sink and a hot plate, an old floral couch with a noticeable dip in the middle cushion, a nightstand and lamp, and one bed. Of course there is only one bed. Dean came to Rexford by himself, after all, and he thinks Castiel has a... wherever to go back to, a wherever that isn’t this motel room, and definitely isn’t Dean’s bed in this motel room.

But that means Castiel will have to go back to the storage room of the Gas-n-Sip tonight. He will have to unroll his sleeping bag and fold his shirts and pants into something like a pillow and set an alarm on his phone for 5:00 to give himself enough time to pack everything away again before Bill the delivery man comes by. He will have to turn the first aid kit to face the wall.

Castiel’s gaze rests on the twin mounds under the blanket at the head of the bed. The blanket is rucked up in one corner, exposing the worn white sheets. He can’t sleep here, that much is obvious, but he can make the bed neat for Dean. As a thank you. To prove he isn’t useless. Castiel isn’t sure which.

He tucks the corner of the blanket in neatly, smoothing it over the mattress. He smooths the other corner too, even though it’s already neat. He rests his good hand on one of the pillows.

Dean opens the bathroom door, towel slung low around his hips, and Castiel freezes in place. Perhaps it’s because Dean caught him coveting the bed. But perhaps it’s because Dean is standing in front of him in a towel, holding it closed with his hand at his hip and Castiel is human now, despite the hurt feelings between them.

Castiel has not been aroused since his night with April. He has been hungry and thirsty, cold, tired, and unclean, angry and afraid, proud and hurt, but he has not been aroused. He swallows, tracking a drop of water that slips down Dean’s chest to his stomach to the edge of the towel. “I -” he starts with no idea what to say.

“Forgot a change of clothes,” Dean says without moving toward his open duffel bag on the floor between them.

“Yes,” Castiel says. “I mean -”

Silence stretches between them. Castiel has seen Dean naked before, has re-formed every inch of Dean’s body with his own hands. But that was the Angel and the Righteous Man. Here, in this cramped motel room in Rexford, Idaho, there is the human Castiel with his sprained wrist and a beating heart that belongs to him, and there is his friend Dean Winchester fresh from the shower. They have survived the Rit Zien and the Fall, Purgatory and the Leviathan. Lucifer. And yet, Castiel thinks if Dean were to bridge the space between them now, he might shatter. It would be unbearable to have this, something,  _ anything _ now, just this once before Dean goes back to Kansas and Castiel goes back to the Gas-n-Sip. It would hurt too much.

So when Dean steps toward him, Castiel steps back. Anger? Disappointment? flashes across Dean’s face momentarily, but he smooths it over and reaches into his duffel bag for a clean shirt and underwear. “Here,” Dean says, pulling out another shirt and tossing it on the bed. “I’m beat. D’you have work in the morning?”

Castiel nods, unable to speak.

“I’ll drop you off. You take the bed, I’ll sleep on the couch.” Dean shuts the bathroom door behind him without another word.

***

The bed is the most comfortable thing Castiel has ever experienced. It probably isn’t, not really, but it certainly feels like it after months of his sleeping bag on the concrete floor of the supply closet and before that, hard, thin mattresses in shelters, the bed in Dean’s motel room is frankly luxurious. And yet, Castiel still can’t sleep.

Across the room, Dean’s breathing is slow and even, but Castiel can see that his eyes are open in the dim glow of the streetlight through the curtain. Castiel looks at his arm instead, the careful stack of pillows under his wrist to keep it above his heart. For the swelling, Dean had said. He’ll have to use his small stack of clothes for his arm instead of his head for the next few days at least. Then maybe he can just sleep in the brace with his wrist resting on his chest. Castiel burrows deeper into the mattress, the sound of the covers shifting around him loud in the stillness.

“Cas?” Dean says it so quietly, Castiel thinks he might have imagined it. “You awake?”

Castiel wants to say yes, to whisper secrets and shame into the darkness between them. He thinks of another motel room, of his filthy trench coat and his beard speckled with dirt and Leviathan ichor. He thinks of the spark of Grace that cleansed him. And he thinks perhaps this is not so different.

But Castiel also wants to say nothing, to feign sleep until he drops off and to return to the Gas-n-Sip in the morning like nothing happened. To greet Bill the delivery man, then Nora, then each person who comes through the doors for gas or a lottery ticket or a bottle of water, as Steve. To wipe the slate clean. And, for the first time in a long time, Castiel thinks of Heaven.

“Dean,” Castiel says, staring pointedly at his arm in its brace. “Naomi ordered me to kill Samandriel.”

There is a creak from the couch, like Dean is turning to look at him. Castiel keeps his eyes trained on his wrist. He remembers the easy weight of his blade, the warm wetness of the vessel’s life force slipping away, the cold blast of Grace collapsing in on itself then exploding out. The charred imprint of Samandriel’s wings on the asphalt.

“You mean Alfie?” Dean asks, which is somehow even more horrible to know.

“Samandriel and Alfie, it seems,” Castiel says. He swallows. They haven’t discussed this. There wasn’t time, not after the crypt, not after the Fall. “I didn’t choose - I wouldn’t have chosen, not after -” Not after the massacre in Heaven by his own hand. Castiel’s stomach churns.

“Cas,” Dean says, and it almost sounds like pity. It almost sounds like disgust. “Why are you telling me this?”

_ Because I remember too much, _ Castiel wants to say.  _ I am a human with an Angel’s memories of eons, but the only ones that matter are after I met you. Because my head is going to burst from it all if I don’t say anything. Because I murdered Jimmy Novak and ripped his family apart. Because I laid waste to Heaven, because I caused the Fall. Because I remember each way Naomi made me kill you, hundreds upon hundreds of times until I snapped your neck without a second thought. Because I agreed to a date with Nora so that she might invite me to spend the night in a real bed. Because I sleep on the floor of the supply closet, and because I don’t have a pillow to put underneath my wrist at night and I will have to steal ibuprofen from the first aid kit when my wrist aches.  _

_ Because I don’t understand why you sent me away, but I think I deserve it. _

“I don’t know,” Castiel says, instead, and they slip into uncomfortable silence, broken only by the couch groaning as Dean flips onto his stomach and buries his head under his pillow.

***

It doesn’t occur to Castiel until the morning that Dean probably wanted to say something. He says, “Dean,” but when Dean looks up at him from packing his duffel, Castiel can only finish with, “may I use your toothpaste?”

Dean just says, “sure,” but it feels forced and overly bright in the light of day. Castiel is grateful that he can close the door of the bathroom between them.

They don’t speak again until they’re in the Impala. “Cas,” Dean starts, fiddling with his keys, still in his hand.

The parking lot of the motel is quiet. Castiel sees a bird, a robin, land on the roof of a minivan a few spots over. The robin cocks its head, then takes off. Castiel tracks its path up, over the motel, away from this place until he can’t see it anymore. He looks back over at Dean who is watching him watch the bird.

Dean opens his mouth, closes it, looks away. He puts the key in the ignition. “Gonna stop for breakfast on the way,” he says to the steering wheel.

Castiel tries again at the diner, but he is overwhelmed by the sheer number of options on the menu, and the smells. Dean orders bacon and eggs for both of them, when Castiel finds he can’t speak. He reaches across the table and flips the mug in front of Castiel right side up.

Around them, the diner is noisy, the low murmur of conversation, the scrape of utensils, the bell dinging in the kitchen. A woman comes by the table and fills their mugs, then their plates a few minutes later. “Dean,” Castiel says, watching Dean scoop his eggs and bacon onto his toast. He hasn’t touched his own plate, other than to pick up his toast and turn it between his fingers, before putting it back down to stop it from crumbling away. 

The diner feels too public for the conversation, yet the Impala was too private. There are too many people, or too few. There is too much space between them, or not enough. They are two pieces that used to go together, but one of them is worn down too much to fit correctly anymore. Or perhaps it’s both of them. “Could you pass the sugar?” Castiel asks, and finally, eats.

***

The drive to the Gas-n-Sip is just as quiet as breakfast. Castiel expects it to stretch on for ages, but it doesn’t. They pull up to the curb in front of the store. Castiel expects his departure to be simple, without fuss, but it isn’t. Dean apologizes. Dean tells Castiel he is proud. Dean tells Castiel that he is human now and not to worry. Dean looks at Castiel through the open window and every unsaid thing from the night before, from this morning is laid bare on his face for a moment, then he lifts his fingers in something like a wave, and Castiel turns away.

There are Angels Falling on the news. There is a human in a gas station in Idaho with an ache just starting up in his once-borrowed wrist. There is a ding from the bell above the door as Bill the delivery man backs in, swinging his hand truck around with a, “Morning, Steve.”

“Good morning, Bill,” Castiel says, and the day begins.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry ♥ (can you tell i only ever write fluff?) rebloggable tumblr link [here!](https://good-things-do-happen-dean.tumblr.com/post/630434497260879872/and-the-moment-passes-9x06-fanfiction-gap)


End file.
